Age‐related changes in memory reactivation by 1‐ and 2‐year‐old human infants

In three experiments, we examined the effect of a single reactivation treatment on retention by 1‐ and 2‐year‐old human infants who were tested in the visual recognition memory (VRM) paradigm. In all experiments, infants were familiarized with a visual stimulus and were tested after a delay. In the absence of a reactivation treatment, infants of both ages exhibited forgetting but exposure to a reactivation treatment alleviated forgetting after the same delay. When the duration of the original familiarization period was only 10 s, the minimum duration of an effective reminder treatment was 1 s for 2‐year‐olds, but was 5 s for 1‐year‐olds. When the duration of the original familiarization period was increased to 30 s, however, a 1‐s reminder also alleviated forgetting by 1‐year‐olds. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 48: 48–57, 2006.